The above-mentioned deep truths get the attention of peninsular Italy’s best known and most beloved wise villager, Strega Nona of Calabria. Grandma Witch Nona indeed has no trouble in adhering to the basic gardening rule of cultivating orderly plantings in the appropriate places at the correct times. Why is it not surprising that the rule passes right over Big Anthony’s head in “Strega Nona’s Harvest”?

*****

Website: http://www.tomie.com/

*****

Spring melting of snow in Calabria alert Strega Nona to annual cycle of planting, with emphasis on rotation gardening, and subsequent bountiful harvests.

Every year, she follows critical rules to ensure healthy outputs from the current garden and for all subsequent annual plantings. She gathers and stores seeds from each season’s harvest. She gets them from winter-stored packets in a wood box. After chanting to May’s full moon and releasing three airborne kisses, she has the seeds in the soil and ready for lush growth by:

Adhering to proper planting depths and distances hoed respectively straight down and across;

Amending the soil with animal manure and garden compost.

In "Strega Nona's Harvest," Big Anthony watches Strega Nona blow three kisses to the moon, but he still manages to bumble the spell for plentiful harvest.

Daytime moonscape over Calabria

Big Anthony decides to put in a garden behind the goat shed. He dislikes the insistence by Bambolona, the baker Signor Bambo’s daughter and Strega Nona’s assistant, upon straight-lined rows. He does not copy Strega Nona’s perfect alignments. He gives six, not three, kisses to the full moon’s light. He has no clue as to problem-solving chaotic, rampant growth weeks later at harvest time. But he knows that Strega Nona -- whose garden yields attractive, fragrant, tasty produce from accessible rows -- will put his over-abundant harvests to good use. He leaves piles of edibles on her doorstep. Calabria’s most grandmotherly witch makes a feast for the entire village with the bounty from Big Anthony’s disorderly garden.

Strega Nona's Harvest by Tomie dePaola

Tomie dePaola's beloved Strega Nona is back in a colorful picture book, perfect for fall and the changing seasons.

Conclusion

Accomplished chefs and gardeners contemplate inputs by:

Brands;

Trademarks.

Tomie dePaola indeed devotes time free from illustrating and writing books -- with pre-publication help from Apple iPods and Macintoshes -- to creating culinary and horticultural wonderworks. He finds as particularly conducive to quality outputs reliance upon:

Biscuit flour from The White Lily Southern Kitchen;

Meat from Lobel’s of New York and Niman Ranch;

Plants from Spring Ledge and White Flower Farms;

Sheep-milk cheese from Old Chatham Sheepherding Company;

Supplies from Stonewall Kitchen and Williams-Sonoma.

All of the above-mentioned inputs undoubtedly merge to churn Strega Nona’s Harvest into one of G.P. Putnam’s Sons’s top-quality publications in 2009 for:

Ages 4 – 8+;

Grades preschool through third grade and onward.

Grandma Annii's Storytime: Strega Nona's Harvest by Tomi dePaola

Published on YouTube on May 10, 2014 by Grandma Annii ~ URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MdAvU8N3W3Q

Acknowledgment

My special thanks to:

Talented artists and photographers/concerned organizations who make their fine images available on the Internet;

Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University for superior on-campus and on-line resources.